Under the centralized school policy framed by the Chinese government, most primary school and secondary school students have already moved to larger-scale boarding schools. The sanitary conditions of the schools affect the health and upbringing of students directly and significantly. Yet, as for most schools in our service area, Baojing County in Hunan, the canteens, dormitories and toilets are of poor sanitary conditions. The majority of the schools lack a bathroom; water supply equipment is seriously insufficient.

Take Qingshui Primary School (清水小學) as an example, it has neither tap water supplies nor bathrooms. Students used to take showers in the rivers near the school. However, the school has banned students from going to any rivers again after an accident that a student had been drowned in a river. All the 650-odds teachers and students could only share six taps for daily water use.

On the other hand, due to the lack of resource and nutritional knowledge, the schools do not provide any health or hygiene education. Normally, their canteen menus are too simple that same dish can be served for an entire week sometimes. The lack of food diversification caused malnutrition for students. Students are then easy to suffer from related health problems such as developmental delay and deficiency of vitamin.

The plan aims at raising awareness of hygiene among students, teachers and parents, encouraging them to actively improve sanitary situations of schools and establishing a set of sustainable work pattern for sanitation promotions in low income villages. This set of pattern includes participations from schools, teachers, parents, students and the regional government. Targeting rural students, the plan hopes to enhance the health and sanitary levels of villages comprehensively.

In 2010, the Institute for Integrated Rural Development, Hong Kong (IRD) cooperated with 14 primary and secondary schools in Baojing County, launching the phase one of the plan. It subsidized schools to have a school health office. The office provides consultations and services for teachers and students related to health and sanitation. The service areas include:

• Promoting education for health and hygiene;
• Setting up a system and rating the standard for sanitation of schools and dormitories;
• Setting up a medical room equipping basic medicines in schools;
• Providing teachers and school doctors with a free training for health education;
• Setting up a set of nutritional food plan for an on-campus canteen which does not increase the cost for school;
• Providing on-campus canteen’s staff with trainings for knowledge on hygiene and food nutrition;
• Hosting events and talks on health and hygiene education for parents;
• Conducting free body checkups for students annually;
• Subsidizing poor students to purchase personal hygiene items;
• Improving school sanitary conditions and facility quality in student dormitory for 9 schools, which includes constructing impoundments and bathrooms, connecting water pipes, and replacing metal-framed beds and windows.

Under the support of both Fu Tak Iam Foundation and the Baojing County’s Government, we implemented the second phase of the plan in 2013. Covering all the 40 boarding primary and secondary schools in Baojing County, the phase serves over 30,000 students in poor areas each year. The second phase not only spreads the mentioned tasks out across schools of the whole county, but also:

• Subsidizes 36 schools in constructing infrastructure closely related to sanitary conditions, including water supply facilities, bathrooms, toilets and trash areas; and subsidizes 14 schools among the 36 schools in replacing beds in dormitory and old classroom desks. The total subsidiary is amounted to over RMB 2.34 million;
• Organizes a “School Hygiene Supervising Team” which encourages students, parents, villagers of the respective village and teachers to manage the schools’ sanitation in a collaborative manner.

From 2010 to 2012, the Institute offered body checkups to over 20,400 students, and noticed that the incidence of most common diseases decreased significantly:

The sanitation conditions of most schools has significant improvements:

The Institute greatly appreciates Fu Tak Iam Foundation Limited’s sponsorship to the Stethoscope Plan.